“In ten years, as sure as you live, Prudence” (Europe’s name was Prudence Servien), “I will return to be the death of you, if I am scragged for it.”

The President of the Court tried to reassure the girl by promising her the protection and the care of the law; but the poor child was so terror-stricken that she fell ill, and was in hospital nearly a year.  Justice is an abstract being, represented by a collection of individuals who are incessantly changing, whose good intentions and memories are, like themselves, liable to many vicissitudes.  Courts and tribunals can do nothing to hinder crimes; their business is to deal with them when done.  From this point of view, a preventive police would be a boon to a country; but the mere word Police is in these days a bugbear to legislators, who no longer can distinguish between the three words—­Government, Administration, and Law-making.  The legislator tends to centralize everything in the State, as if the State could act.

The convict would be sure always to remember his victim, and to avenge himself when Justice had ceased to think of either of them.

Prudence, who instinctively appreciated the danger—­in a general sense, so to speak—­left Valenciennes and came to Paris at the age of seventeen to hide there.  She tried four trades, of which the most successful was that of a “super” at a minor theatre.  She was picked up by Paccard, and to him she told her woes.  Paccard, Jacques Collin’s disciple and right-hand man, spoke of this girl to his master, and when the master needed a slave he said to Prudence: 

“If you will serve me as the devil must be served, I will rid you of Durut.”

Durut was the convict; the Damocles’ sword hung over Prudence Servien’s head.

But for these details, many critics would have thought Europe’s attachment somewhat grotesque.  And no one could have understood the startling announcement that Carlos had ready.

“Yes, my girl, you can go back to Valenciennes.  Here, read this.”

And he held out to her yesterday’s paper, pointing to this paragraph: 

  “TOULON—­Yesterday, Jean Francois Durut was executed here.  Early
  in the morning the garrison,” etc.

Prudence dropped the paper; her legs gave way under the weight of her body; she lived again; for, to use her own words, she never liked the taste of her food since the day when Durut had threatened her.

“You see, I have kept my word.  It has taken four years to bring Durut to the scaffold by leading him into a snare.—­Well, finish my job here, and you will find yourself at the head of a little country business in your native town, with twenty thousand francs of your own as Paccard’s wife, and I will allow him to be virtuous as a form of pension.”

Europe picked up the paper and read with greedy eyes all the details, of which for twenty years the papers have never been tired, as to the death of convicted criminals:  the impressive scene, the chaplain—­who has always converted the victim—­the hardened criminal preaching to his fellow convicts, the battery of guns, the convicts on their knees; and then the twaddle and reflections which never lead to any change in the management of the prisons where eighteen hundred crimes are herded.